Creative processes revolve around fostering, synthesising, exploring, communicating, transforming, and externalising ideas. The process of capturing ideas in idea archives, e.g. notebooks and digital repositories of sources of inspiration, is therefore a central component in creative work.
In line with the general trend towards digitalisation, idea archives are also becoming digitalised. We might think that digital systems would have made it easier for creative professionals to work with idea archives, but in practice we see that they find it hard to manage and make use of their ideas with digital systems. Ideas are often scattered across of a range of different tools that are poorly integrated, hampering the creative process.
In this project, I will study creative practices as they unfold “in the wild” among skilled creative practitioners, including architects and designers, to uncover how they create and manage idea archives, and to explore how idea archives support them in revisiting, reusing, combining, and synthesising ideas. The objective is to yield insights into how we can better support the practice of creating, maintaining and making use of idea archives.
Project title:
Digital Idea Archives in Creative Work
Area of research:
Interaction design
Fellowship period:
1 Feb 2019 – 31 Jan 2020
Fellowship type:
Jens Christian Skou fellow
This fellowship has received funding from The Aarhus University Research Foundation.
